Rhapsody on a Theme of Dragons
by Ajora
Summary: Despite her best intentions to avoid getting involved in politics, Faris is a princess and therefore a public figure by default. She'll have none of it, but she also has no experience with the subtleties of politics among noble houses and she won't burden Lenna with this nonsense. Might as well consult the master.


This is a follow-up to The Island. It's recommended that you read that, first. Also, elements from Orbital Dynamics are mentioned, but they're not as important to understand.

* * *

On the full moon of the seventh month, the dead are supposed to be able to walk the earth. As if they don't already do so the rest of the year, at least when necromancy's involved.

The traditional offerings for ghosts is supposed to be rice and water. There are supposed to be a shrines involved, a dance, and probably some prayers Faris doesn't know. Having been dead once already and familiar with the numbed disregard the dead have for everything, she's pretty sure these things exist more to appease the living. There's also fire and the burning of joss paper and incense involved. While Faris isn't the superstitious sort and believes none of it does a whit of good, she does know fire and is always down for burning something.

Normally she'd not bother with this. All the proper respects were paid at her father's state funeral, and she did spend a bit of time with him while she was dead. When Lenna makes her annual visit to the family mausoleum, Faris is right there with her.

Not that there was much left of him for the mausoleum. The memory of spending hours hunched over a desk drawing out a chart of the Lonkan floating continent's wreckage dispersal path and likely distribution of detritus by the currents for the Tycoon recovery team makes her feel exhausted even now, years after the fact. Faris reckons that the salvage operations shared between Tycoon, Bal, Jacole, and the newly-minted Nazalea Confederacy are still going on—there was too much of value on that floating continent to just let its bits and pieces rot.

Really, she's not doing this to reconnect with her father. It's been five years since the worlds reunited and the political field is highly volatile. Faris typically doesn't care one whit for politics, but it's not _her_ fault she turned out to be this missing princess and is, therefore, a public figure by default. It's _definitely_ not her fault that her uncanny resemblance to her warmonger grandfather makes some people nervous and others hopeful for a return to the golden age of Tycoon conquering everything in its path—having finally come across the one portrait of Gelon Tycoon that her father hadn't burned in his vengeance, she can't fault those familiar with her grandfather for the assumption. That those assumptions have the weight of Faris' own criminal past fueling them only hampers her efforts to stay the hell out of politics.

In the effort to divorce herself from her grandfather's legacy, Faris tried to accentuate the differences. Gelon looked like he had never been happy a day in his life, so she plays up the merry swashbuckler act regardless of her actual mood, all too aware that her glower is practically a mirror image of his. Gelon favored black and red for his king's accoutrements, so Faris shelved her captain's greatcoat and her formal outfits, always cut like a man's, are in ivory and gold. His straw-like hair was close-cropped, hers is her one real vanity and she keeps it grown out as long as it will go. And so on.

Yet, sometimes when Lenna's slight shoulders bow under the pressure of running a kingdom herself, Faris seethes and wants to haul Gelon's ugly steel crown out of the bowels of the treasury and prove everyone right about her. She _wants_ to snap at Walse for haranguing her for her airship building program. She _wants_ to tear Tule apart for being so ungrateful for their new freedom as to dither over the details of the proposed trade agreements with Tycoon. She _wants_ to rip Carwen's throat out for complaining about the expeditions Tycoon sends to North Mountain to retrieve dragon eggs for their recovery program. She _wants_ to shatter the Nazalea Confederacy for objecting to Tycoon's overreach in still being involved with the Lonka salvage. In her darkest moments, plagued as she is by politics, she can't blame Gelon at all for going to war.

It's for Lenna, and for her own soul, that she's here to summon the dead. Faris needs advice that she refuses to go to anyone else for; if she has to get her hands dirty, she'd rather no one know about it so as to better shield Lenna from any backlash.

He turns up around midnight. The spirit of her father looks old, worn-out the way he did just before his death. It takes him a moment to get his bearings and figure out that he's in the family mausoleum. When the recognition finally strikes, Faris raises her glass.

"Mornin', Dad."

Her father's eyebrows go up at what she's sure is an unusual tableau: a couple of chairs hauled from the castle, a table between them with a bottle of wine and two glasses, lit candles and incense that some Istorian shaman assured her would help her raise the dead, her cello propped between her knees and its bow unceremoniously stuck in the bass-side _f_-hole, and his final resting place right behind her. And she's in her king's garb. That always makes people look twice.

With a grin, she stands and steps out from behind her cello to make a sweeping bow. The white trousers aren't so different from what she used to wear as a captain, though the silk certainly feels nicer against her skin than the wool ever did. She still favors boots to the shoes that are in fashion; these are just nicer than her old pair. The waistcoat works as just as well as the binder did to hold her breasts in, and embroidered silver sea dragons swim up and down the edges and stand out brightly against the pale blue-grey, wave-patterned damask fabric. The ivory and gold brocade coat is probably her favorite part of the ensemble: the brocade is in a subtle dragonscale pattern with stylized wings in the back, the gold satin lining flashes when she strides through the castle and the long skirt-like tail in the back flares out like the one on her captain's greatcoat, red stitches decorate along some of the seams as an acknowledgment of her role as the Light Warrior of Fire. The white satin sash with its embroidered gold band and gold sky dragon brooch might have been purloined from a portrait of her father at her age, though the white lace cravat and its Syldra-shaped pin is all her.

"You've appointed yourself king?" The tone of his voice is mild curiosity, but the crinkling at the corners of his eyes betray his amusement at her gall.

"'Twas a concession, I'm afraid. I'll not wear a dress and the ministers refuse to let me attend official functions in my preferred attire. Lenna's still the ruling queen. She can keep her throne." Frankly, the very notion of undertaking Lenna's workload and responsibilities drives Faris up the wall. Anyone who would want to be a ruler of a nation has no idea what it takes to be a _good_ one.

At her gesture of invitation, he joins her on the other chair; she sits back down shortly after he does, sets aside her glass, and drapes herself over her cello like some dragon sunning on a warm rock.

Fine, so maybe she did want to reconnect. This silence of theirs is comfortable; she has her own death to thank for that. She knows now, in a way she didn't before, that he accepts her as she is. For some reason he's never explained, he even seems proud of her. It's not something she needed—she came to terms with not having a proper family long ago—but both acceptance and pride from her father are nice to have.

"When did you take up the cello?" he asks at last, once his form fully shifts from transparent shade to solid and almost alive.

"Oh, well, funny story, that." Faris pulls her bow out of the sound hole and tucks it frog-end into her palm so she can get to it quickly when she needs to. She plucks out a simple tune that goes up and down scales, altering the beginning note each time. It's meant to evoke the thought of the Crystals spinning idly over their daises, light catching and reflecting off their facets. "We lost most of the skills the Crystal shards taught us when they put themselves back together. The ones we kept were those from the Crystals that chose us. Butz still makes a good fighter, with sword or without. Lenna's still our best mage. Krile's a nightmare with her katana and a wizard with potions. Me, I sneak around better than ever, I've still got a good ear and a knack with timing, and," her eyes might sparkle when she says it and her fingers pause for the moment, "any dragon I talk to talks back."

Her father perks up and his eyes sparkle just as much as hers. "Wild ones, too?"

"Aye. Wild and domesticated. Any variety of dragon. Mind, some of that I got from you. Fire Crystal just… enhanced it, I reckon." And _that_ was an exciting discovery, being hit with a wave of malice just before some demon dragon leapt out at them from a treasure chest. Her head still aches sometimes from Shinryuu's mental assault.

"You were always sensitive to them," her father says slowly as he works through some memory or other. "Notos said he heard you when you were born. It's why I wanted you to ride him as soon as your mother allowed it."

Admittedly, she doesn't recall much of that time. At most she has snatches of half-remembered feelings and maybe some images. She does remember her father's dragon introducing himself for the first time and running, screaming, to the nearest watchtower because his voice sounded in her head and not from outside her like human voices.

Sometimes Faris suspects that this sensitivity is why she heard Syldra in that whirlpool he kicked up when she was fifteen, just before she dived in and they bonded. Nowadays it's just a matter of course, especially once Krile helped her hone her ability, and the dragons she encounters just mentally curl up in her head until she shoo's them out. Something about them recognizing her as kin.

She sets the bow on the D string and close enough to the G string for it to resonate and starts—the notes short and spirited and low-voiced, the bow strokes short, strong, and made down-bow. It's her, strutting around her ship. Or, rather, _wishing_ she could strut around her ship—she ties the notes together under longer bow-strokes and rounds out the sharp notes, adding a bit of wistfulness to the composition. "Turns out I can't go back to piracy. Everyone knows my face as both Sarisa and the captain."

"The price of being a public figure," her father says dryly, though he's not unsympathetic.

With a nod, the composition changes. She shifts to the A string and starts on Lenna's theme: open, clear notes and long, measured bow-strokes. Elegant but unpretentious. "I can visit my crew and offer advice to my replacement. Can't do a thing elsewise that might endanger Lenna or her political standing." Her theme joins with Lenna's for the moment and her motif turns almost martial, an acknowledgement of her protectiveness towards her little sister, before she breaks away from Lenna's notes and goes back to her own.

Her motif grows sharper, louder, quicker, the notes disconnecting as the bow bounces along the string and almost growling as she runs the bow over both D and G strings at the same time. It sounds like she was growing unhinged. Which she was. "So I'm stuck most of the time at Tycoon with the ministers hounding me about being a _proper_ princess. Drives me up the fucking wall."

Her father, to his credit, says nothing. She shifts over to second position on the G string for Butz's theme: light, quick notes and long bow-strokes. "Butz comes along to the rescue and hauls me out for an expedition to rout out the bandits camping in Kuza Castle." Okay, maybe he didn't _haul_ her out; she was practically out the door the moment he said "expedition". Her motif brightens as it joins him on the way to Kuza. "Found shielddragons, didn't find bandits." With that, she introduces a slow, shambling bowing along the C and G strings with languid notes in a minor key. "Undead dragons, difficult to defeat but easy to control. And since we'd already gone all that way, why not have some fun?"

This part gets tricky, the joining of her motif with the shielddragons; she has to shift her finger placement further up on the G string to avoid awkward bowing. The tune grows playful—the shielddragons liked her, and she suspects that half the reason for _that_ is that she'd been dead once. They were mostly mindless, but what little mind they did have left propelled them to listen to her. They responded well to simple commands, and she and Butz weren't above exploiting that. "So we played with them and headed back."

Her father's face goes peculiar; likely he's trying and failing to picture frolicking undead horrors. Faris tries not to grin as she plays her and Butz returning to Tycoon and running into Lenna. Sure they'd left a message, but Lenna prefers to be personally informed and her motif grows a bit snippy for being left behind again. "Lenna gets Butz to snitch about playing fetch with the undead, because she's _magic_ that way."

_That_ does it. A fond smile splits his face, likely at the thought of Lenna getting into a larger man's face to glare him down until he caves. She'd probably done it to dear old Father plenty of times. Heavens knew Faris got _that_ particular glare often enough, and frankly she prefers it to the disappointment.

"Now, my dear little sister knows me better than I know myself. The minx." It's said with all the love in the world, of course. She expands on Lenna's theme, turning it into a full song. "Knows I need to keep busy and knows to keep me separate from the nobles. Gave me this to better manage me."

It was framed as a birthday gift and gesture of appreciation from a master craftsman for helping to save the world, but Faris has no illusions. Lenna is a canny manipulator when she sets her mind to it and the gift has her fingerprints all over it: the painting on the cello's back of her lost ship and Syldra near the bluffs of her former hide-away is too intimate a detail for a stranger to just come up with on his own. Lenna denies all knowledge of masterminding its commission, but there's always a twinkle in her eye that betrays her whenever Faris brings up the issue. She did well and she knows it.

To be fair to Lenna, it _was_ a clever scheme. Anyone Faris practices swordplay with will let her win on account of her being the queen's feral sister. The only ones who _won't_ are the other Light Warriors, who came away from the whole save-the-world quest with enough skill to present Faris with a challenge. Problem with _that_ is that the queen can't always make the time for Faris and her restlessness, Krile heads the excavation of Lonkan ruins and spends all her time studying them, and who the hell knows where Butz disappears to half the time. After a few lessons in playing it right, the cello got to be an outlet. It takes well to the fast pace and high energies of scherzos, she finds its range more pleasing and more _like her_ than other instruments, and she usually manages to burn herself out enough to not be completely unbearable at supper.

"I'm surprised you let her," her father admits.

"Oh, there's no '_let her_' with Lenna. She'll get her way, and she's so sweet about it that it's impossible to say no." It's difficult not to laugh before she gets out what she wants to say, and the insistent tugging at the corners of her lips are probably betraying her. _Focus, you idiot_. "'Sides, I figure if she gets annoying, I'll…throw a frog down her dress or something."

"Faris." Her father looks like he's torn between wanting to laugh and wanting to scold her.

"Hey, I've been good," she starts off with feigned innocence. "Haven't even _started_ making up for the years of lost pranking opportunities. Only pranked her _once_ in all these years."

His eyes, dragon-green like theirs, widen in growing horror. "Faris—"

"Spiders in her hair," she continues, eyes glinting, and she's sure the broad spread of her grin can be misconstrued as wicked. "You shoulda heard the scream."

His sigh is long-suffering and he looks like he's tempted to plant his face in his hands. _Good_. He missed out on her shenanigans as a kid and this is as good a hint of what she was like as any. "Faris, you didn't—"

Finally she can't help but laugh. It's short, natural, and she might have tears she'll have to scrub out. "Maybe it wasn't _spiders_, exactly. Glitter and sequins. Lenna still finds shiny bits in her hairbrush sometimes."

"Were you like that as a child?"

"When I could be." Despite her best intentions to avoid going any deeper on the subject of her childhood, her mood goes somber anyway. "Cap'n kept me too busy to get into trouble often. 'Twas easier getting pranks set up when ol' Merrick banned me from shore leave."

Her father, thankfully, has Lenna's preternatural empathy and knows when a subject change is due. Still, he seems a bit uncertain when he speaks again. "Faris?"

"Mm?" The music leaves her head and she doesn't know where to go from here. She was meandering and they both know it. Yet, now that they're actually talking again, Faris finds that she's reluctant to talk about politics. It all seems so…trite and pathetic, especially when she should be taking this time to really bond with her father over dumb shit that's way more important to her than some desperate power plays by even more desperate old weasels.

"Don't get me wrong. I enjoy talking to you," he starts slowly. The _way_ he says it—that open, honest sort of way that Lenna inherited—just makes her angrier at long-dead old pirates who knew who she was and kept her anyway. "I don't think you summoned me just to share stories."

"Nah." But now that he mentions it, why the hell _hasn't_ Faris done this before? It's not like she's afraid of anything death-related. Maybe the thought that she _could_ just slipped her mind until she needed his help, the way the details of her island faded from memory once she returned to the living. The only things she remembers about it is reconnecting with Syldra and Galuf and finally getting to know her father a little.

With a grunt of acknowledgment towards how messy this might be, Faris sets her cello on the floor, on its side, with the bow balanced carefully on its bouts. Her pouring out more wine for herself, and filling his cup, is more to get her thoughts in order than any sort of delaying measure.

She starts by explaining how the merging of worlds threw everything into chaos. The bickering over lines on maps. The distrust and envy from people from Galuf's world—which was excusable on account of ExDeath beleaguering them thirty years before—towards the people on her world, who flourished financially from exploitation of the Crystals. The way the nobles of her world dismiss the people of Galuf's world as backwards heathens. The way the nations had to work together. Surgate is without a heir to the throne, Karnak teeters on the edge of revolution, Jacole complains about Bal's claims on its borderlands, Walse left bereft without its Crystal, Carwen's new land-locked status devastating its pre-merge harbor-based commerce, the land now separating Tule from Tycoon encouraging Tule to petition for and receive its independence, so on.

She then goes into the personal. Tycoon being home to two of four Light Warriors grates on the other nations, and Bal being friendly with Tycoon makes its neighbors from from both worlds distrustful of Tycoon's sphere of influence for entirely different reasons. Walse complains about her and Lenna keeping the airship and building a fleet modeled after it, and claims that they're _saber-rattling_, somehow. Her being a known criminal makes everyone wary about her intentions, even though she wiles away her time running Lenna's errands and playing her cello. It doesn't matter that Tycoon has officially expunged her criminal record, at least for anything done within its borders; her past misadventures transcend nations. Her being a known criminal who looks a lot like her warmongering grandfather? It's become a matter of increasing discontent. As talented a politician as Lenna is, she can only do so much to assuage the fears of others.

Then there's the interpersonal. The nobles loyal to her father want an heir produced, preferably by birth. Lenna's terrified of the thought; their mother's _royal disease_ didn't manifest until she was pregnant with Sarisa. In the end, it was a combination of the royal disease, blood poisoning from some deep-set infection, and some rare other syndromes that ended up killing their mother. Lenna proclaimed herself the Virgin Queen entirely to escape having to get pregnant; that she's just about as queer as Faris is barely entered into the decision. The mitigating efforts they made to find a cousin the nobles would approve of and appointing him as heir apparent didn't work as well as they hoped. As for the nobles who weren't loyal to her father? They're eager for Gelon Tycoon's return and try to encourage Faris to consider expanding her ambitions. They play up her past experiences as a pirate king who successfully pulled off several raids on guarded merchant fleets, using it as some sort of evidence that she has her grandfather's warrior spirit.

Frankly, Faris has been exceedingly generous in avoiding gutting the old men every time they so much as bring up the topic. To do anything to assume power would be to betray Lenna, and that's something she would never consider. The very thought offends her.

Her father sips on his wine as he considers the mess. While she didn't bring up the discontent with his pacifism from her grandfather's followers, surely it had been just as prominent in his time. And yeah, maybe her kneejerk reaction is to indulge in her desire for violence—she's still a pirate at heart, after all—but it takes a hell of a lot more work to build than to destroy, and she's not about to knock down her father's work just to for the satisfaction of retribution.

It would help if his glance didn't slide over to her in speculation. Faris factors into this mess, and she really wishes she didn't. "May I ask some things?"

"We've a few hours."

"You called yourself the Pirate King. You dress yourself up as one." And, like many things in her life, these actions wheeled around on a treasonous wind to smack her in the face. "Yet you have no desire to take the throne. Didn't you rule, in a way? Are pirate politics that much different?"

The chuckle Faris gives is humorless; there's a world of difference and her father has no idea because he's still blinded by his crown. "It's not like the navy, Dad. Power on a pirate ship is split between the captain and the quartermaster, and defined by the articles of agreement. Constitutions. Those get drawn up with each expedition, and the captain and quartermaster get elected. Captain plans and goes to war. Quartermaster manages the crew, splits the loot, and passes judgment. Everyone gets a vote in what they do. 'Cause it's mostly voluntary, y'see. Men go on account out of desperation and stay for the freedom and their fair share of the loot."

"'Go on account'?"

"Sign on." Faris finds herself picking at the outer seam of her trousers and forces herself to stop. She never really had to _explain_ how piracy worked, before, and it's not like anyone sat her down to do what she's doing now. "Typically, the crew only lasts the expedition and goes their separate ways once it's over."

"'Typically.' I'm assuming you did things differently?" His expression goes speculative again.

"Hah." And this part gets amusing, if just because _he's_ the cause of her ascension as the Pirate King, and her current problems. "When your people tamed the Wind Crystal and let you control the winds, that put the men who couldn't afford your transit passage slips out of work. Seeing as I already had the _Maelstrom_ reinforced and outfitted with chains for Syldra's harness to plow through doldrums, it didn't take much convincing to get the same crews to sign on for multiple expeditions. The longer your control over the Wind Crystal lasted, the bigger my crew got. Ended up having to spread them out over two other ships."

His jaw works as he goes through several things at the same time. There's guilt, defensiveness, indignation, awkwardness, and it's all topped by a grudging appreciation for her brass. It's fascinating to watch it all play on his face. "Was the _Maelstrom_ always yours?"

"Used to be _Carwen's Revenge_ up 'til the previous captain croaked." Faris does try not to smirk in response to her father's dawning realization of just how audacious she was. "Gave it a remodel and a new name when I was seventeen and could afford it."

"That was _you?!_"

Her laughter rings out in the mausoleum, unbridled and unrestrained by the need to pitch it lower. Her stomach hurts by the time it's over and she has to wipe away the tears, but it was worth it. With the distance granted by time, the awareness that Faris' aggressive criminality clashed with her own father's laws on a regular basis is _hilarious_.

Her father manages a wry smile in response. "I can't believe my own daughter declared war on me."

"It's not like either of us _knew_," Faris says, probably out of something she'll refuse to admit might be kindness. "But there's your problem with comparing anything I did to these games blue-bloods play: at the end of the day, there's an honesty to piracy that noblemen lack. Most go pirate 'cause there's no recourse."

"Perhaps," he says slowly, as he mentally adds this new information to whatever plots he's spinning. "You were captain for how long?"

"Five years, and quartermaster for a few months before that. Did a bit of everything that could be done on a ship for the other ten years."

Alexander sets his cup back on the table to lace his fingers together in his lap in a motion so reminiscent of Faris during a contemplative moment that she wonders whether it was something she picked up on as a child, or if it's something she inherited. "The way I see it, you have three avenues to take: You can do nothing, which helps no one and will only allow the discontent to chip away at Lenna's throne. You can help Lenna by assuming responsibilities suited to your skills, thereby presenting a united front. You can lead the discontent down a primrose path and into a trap. There is nothing wrong with either of these paths, but they all have their flaws. Inaction will only precipitate decay, ignoring the discontent to unite with Lenna will only encourage them to seek out other claimants to the throne, and the last requires subterfuge and the capacity to play a role. I'm not sure you would be happy with it."

The slow grin that spreads across Faris' face might well be predatory; it's been too long a time since she'd done a proper raid. She misses the anticipation that builds as she plots, the thrill of the chase, the joy that comes when her target falls into her traps and her quartermaster leads the boarding party to battle. Truth is, she _had_ considered her father's third option, but it didn't seem like the sort of thing a Light Warrior _worthy_ of the title should be doing.

Perhaps that's the other cause of her discontent. Faris genuinely _has_ been trying to be good and prove she was worthy of being the Fire Crystal's chosen warrior, but her natural inclinations are about as much a mess as her identity is. She's kind, she's cruel. She's gentle with her sister, she delights in a good fist-fight. The thought of being able to lure her sister's enemies into a trap and rip into them is so tempting that she might very well lick her chops.

Her father stares hard at her for a moment, like he didn't quite expect her to be _that_ bloodthirsty. "Perhaps the last might not be as much a problem as I thought."

"'Fraid I'm still a pirate at heart." Her smirk is almost sardonic, if softened a bit by consideration for her family. It's hardly _his_ fault that she was raised around the scum of the earth. "Been playing a man for fifteen years. The bits of captaincy the men notice is all feints, stagecraft, and running rigs. That's no bother." It's the part where she _doesn't_ slam some blue-blooded would-be traitor's skull into the castle's stonework until it's a bloody pulp that might trip her up, but she knows better than to _say_ it.

Her father's eyes go distant again as he reconsiders the subject. "But you need to be convincing enough to lead them into your traps."

"Aye. And allow rope enough for the more determined to hang themselves, and ample room for the more cowardly to reconsider their position." Her smirk softens to something more reassuring. "Likeness to dear ol' Grandda' aside, I'm not all monster."

"You look more like your mother, actually," her father says, as if thankful for the slight detour in the subject. "Before she got as sick as she was in her portraits."

Faris supposes it might have been an attempt at reassurance, but it does nothing to influence how _other_ people see her. Still, she appreciates the effort. "Doesn't stop the comparisons."

"People will use any excuse." The way he says it, it's like he's been where she is. Sort of. A commoner raised as a noble isn't that far a cry from a noble raised as a common thief; she reckons the constant judgment is about the same.

"Mm."

He continues on their prior path, his voice contemplative as he thinks aloud. "But yes, you do need to be in a position to draw your enemies' attention and provide them with a reason to consider backing you in full. This is especially important given that you've spurned them before. You've worked on ships most of your life, right?"

"Got to the point where I knew better than the carpenter half the time." Knew better than captains thrice her age, too. It's always been a point of pride for her, but she fails to see what her misspent youth has to do with anything. "Why?"

Judging by the way a corner of his lips twitch, he noticed the bit of pride. "You can use that as an avenue by which to insinuate yourself into the commander-in-chief's role that technically belongs to the king. Claim you wish to get back to sailing, if you like. You're in a position to do whatever you wish, provided Lenna agrees."

"Eh. Don't want to dirty her hands with this nonsense." Hell, the entire reason Faris wanted to consult him was to avoid that.

"She's the queen. It's unavoidable." Despite the subject matter, her father's voice warms. Probably because her protectiveness towards Lenna is so transparent. "What you _can_ do is assume responsibility for the worst of it. Inform her of your intentions, and it's best that you do. It'll ease her heart when you're expected to betray her, and you'll almost certainly be asked to demonstrate your commitment to their cause."

"Would rather stick 'em with a knife in some back alley," she grouses. Too bad it's simpler said than done; the backlash would only cause grief.

Her father tries and fails to stifle his snort of amusement. "No stabbing the nobles. That's frowned upon."

And her response is, naturally, deadpan. "Point taken."

His lips purse in the attempt to avoid laughing at the pun; he has to breathe for a few moments before the urge passes. Still, he can't hide that he's smiling into his cup. The crinkling around his eyes gives him away.

It's a marvel that they're so at ease with each other, considering that they only really got to know each other in death. Generally Faris is only this playful around her friends and Lenna. She wishes this could last, but evidently all her luck got spent on being able to keep her balance exceptionally well.

"You might also want to, ah, play up your lack of formal education." Her father's voice starts as hesitant, and then he sounds like he regrets the sentence the moment he ends it.

He's right. Faris has no education in courtly matters, and finds the posturing and petty machinations irritating. It might just serve her well if she plays the easily-manipulated, ignorant fool and simply lets Lenna's opponents think she's going along with their plans.

So, Faris has the start of a plan in place. It's longer-ranging and more intricate than she likes, and she misses when just challenging someone to a duel was enough, but it'll do. She might even enjoy it—she misses the grand production that was being the dastardly pirate captain, strutting around a captured ship and threatening people who might yet be useful additions to the crew. There's nothing quite as _fun_ as playing the villain.

"My thanks, Dad. I've got the makings of a raiding plan." Not to mention the beginnings of ideas to follow through on once she ousts the rats, but that is even further-ranging and might require Lenna's involvement. But this is a start. Faris smiles into her own cup as she considers widespread reform.

"Just…do me a favor and try to avoid taking over the world," her father says, voice as dry as if he knows there are no promises. Not from her.

"Scupper that. I'll rock the boat, cause some chaos. Still got no interest in resuming Granddad's idiocy." Faris has seen how much work her sister has to do to run Tycoon, hell if she wants to even consider taking on however many orders of magnitude of work _ruling a world_ would be.

With the most annoying of her problems given a plan of attack, she picks up her cello again. They only have a couple of hours left, and she's determined to make it count. Her fingers settle on the strings in just the right places and she starts with a bit of background music to provide a bit of flavor as she recounts some silly anecdote about her and Lenna chasing each other around the gardens in the effort to practice swordplay. It's funnier now than it was then, and Lenna managed to get the better of her by taking advantage of her cockiness, and then they ended up rolling about the garden play-wrestling and thoroughly ruining their clothes with grass stains. It was childish. It was absurd. It was so much fun.

It's followed up by another silly Lenna anecdote, and another. Her father looks genuinely happy as she entertains him with them, which is all she really wants. Naturally, it ends too soon; the sky starts to lighten. Faris just barely notices him fading and sets her cello down before urgency overtakes her. She nearly leaps out of her chair to haul her father out of his and into her arms.

He's not as solid and almost alive as he was on the island, but he hugs her back anyway. It doesn't last nearly long enough; he becomes more and more insubstantial with every breath she takes. Then, before he's completely gone, he whispers his thanks.

Faris has no idea what he's thanking her for. The flame on the Istorian summoning candle goes out, taking her father with it.

Well, there's always next year. Maybe she'll bring Lenna.

* * *

This fic is written for Bon, the Japanese festival for the dead that's counterpart to the Chinese Ghost Festival.

If you wish to read my translations of several Japanese guidebooks that provide backdrop for this fic, Alexander especially, I have a compilation of them here: ajora. dreamwidth 345349. html


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